


Vigil

by Amadi



Category: White Collar
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Chromatic Character, Community: Month of June, Families of Choice, Gen, Hospitals, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-30
Updated: 2010-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amadi/pseuds/Amadi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She keeps watch, because that's what she does, and what she expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigil

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Like an Old Familiar Song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/91154) by [zvi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zvi/pseuds/zvi). 



> This is inspired by and a semi-sequel to Zvi's story, which was written for a prompt I left in a comment ficathon. Inspiration runs in cycles.
> 
> This was written for the [Month of June](http://month-of-june.dreamwidth.org/) event at Dreamwidth.

Every single hospital room in New York City is just like every other hospital room in New York City. It doesn't matter whether it's a private suite at a private Upper West Side clinic with wooden floors and clumsy attempts at "homey" touches, or a semi-private room with peeling wallpaper in a public hospital in the Village. Every single hospital visit means more of her time spent praying to a God she's not sure hears her any more.

_Her sister: gallbladder, gone bad seemingly in an evening and nearly ending her sister's life, who knew gallstones could do all that? Her mother: a bad interaction of icy street, yellow taxi and miniature schnauzer, a broken hip, the beginning of her decline._

This room may look different, but the feeling is exactly the same. It took a quiet act of subterfuge to get her inside, a victimless fraud carried out at the direction of the wife of an FBI agent. The agent lay in the bed next door, his wife sitting just as June is now, watching and waiting.

_Her son: a tonsillectomy. Simple, but he was so small, and utterly inconsolable before and after, unless mama was right there, holding his tiny hand._

At this moment, the man she watches seems ephemeral, nothing like flesh and bone she could reach out and touch or hold. Not that there's ever been any holding him. He's always been just out of her grasp. The moment she thinks she understands him, he shows her just a glimpse of a whole new facet, unfathomable, esoteric to her as ancient Greek or Byron's unending fascination with Ann-Margret. One day, she tells herself, one day she'll get him figured out. She always does in the end.

The end. That's nothing pleasant to think about. Right now all she has figured out is that the way that the monitor kindly blips out the constant notice that his heart is still beating is a good thing, the healthy rate, the steady pace, they're good signs.

His heart has stopped twice, once while she sat there watching. She's still rather indignant about that. That wasn't meant to happen. Yes, the first bullet nicked the heart muscle, the second nearly severed an important artery, but still. He's not allowed to stop. Not yet.

The surgeons, extraordinarily gifted young men and women, think that its their skill that has kept him alive but she knows better. It's the charm. And the charm has no right abandoning him when he needs it most. He's served the charm, been hostage to it when he didn't have anything else to keep him safe, warm, fed, alive.

_God, keep him charmed._ She whispers the words into her hands, her eyes tracking the amber line skittering up and down across the little screen, the steady blip-blip-blip, the rhythm of his life, offering no soothing to her sorrow, no tonic for her nerves.

_Her daughter: the surgeries, the scans, needle after needle. She wasn't going to make it through leukemia without a fierce protector, and so that's what June became. Turned out that it didn't matter in the end. Pneumonia. Just like Byron, same hospital, some of the same nurses even, four years apart._

Bedside vigils in chilly hospital rooms don't get any easier with experience.

_Her granddaughter: dialysis, more dialysis. Then the miracle. Thanks, she knows, in no small part to Neal._

Bedside vigils, whether in the nicest hospital rooms or the dingiest, in the most high-tech ICU units like this one or the most run of the mill general wards, are never comfortable.

But they are the duty of love.

And silent, distant God help her, she loves him.

And she sits here with him because she knows that when her time comes -- and it will come, sooner than she wants, sooner than she'll ever believe that she deserves -- he'll be the one in the lumpy, plastic-covered chair, and she'll be the shadow in the bed. Right now, he will return, in turn, she will fade. But he'll hold her hand.

And that's good enough for her.


End file.
